The Last of the Light (part one)

“So that light-footed man of yours is gone again.”

Lily straightens. She’s been washing clothes, hauling water from the well in wooden buckets that leave splinters in her hands. The heat presses like an anvil on her back and her head aches with the hard white light of another spring morning in the desert. That relentless light lulls her into numbness, squeezes thought from her brain. She has to squint to make out the squat dark shape of Tia Rosa, emerging soundlessly from a tangle of crosote and low mesquites at the edge of the yard.

Lily wipes her hair from her face with a sweat-sticky hand and smiles gratefully. That’s how it’s been, these long days with Ethan gone more than he’s home, and the baby a screaming nightmare from dawn to dusk and all into the night.

Most every morning, Tia Rosa comes striding over the hill. Some days she’ll sit and smoke and laugh with Lily till the last of the light, when hoof beats on the road tell them both that Ethan’s come back. Then Tia Rosa melts into the lengthening shadows, disappearing back over the hill as Ethan’s horse swings round the last bend.

“He’s just gone up to Meridian to buy a bull. He’ll be back by suppertime,” says Lily. Her hopes are on that bull: all the long hard months since they’d left Saint Louis redeemed, if only Ethan can get his herd started and get his hand in the money of running cattle.

She drapes the last of the baby’s diaper cloths over a rock. Tiny mica chips in the rock catch the sun, flashing in her eyes like stars. She blinks away blue spots.

“We’re goin to be all right now.”

“All right how?” Tia Rosa settles on a broad white stone and lights her pipe. She has a face like wrinkled leather and broad cheekbones furrowed as the washes before the summer rains come down. Her hair is still black, snaking from two messy buns above her ears, but it’s thin and brittle and there are bald patches on her scalp.

Tia wears the same faded blue dress all the time and her feet in twisted rope sandals make Lily think of rocks. Tia Rosa belongs to this land. But fair-haired Lily, in her sprigged dress and boots and sunbonnet, rubs her sun-reddened arms and envies the old woman’s toughness.

“Ethan read all about it,” she tells Tia Rosa. “How to be a cattle baron. Acres and acres of land, and a fine big house. It’s just been harder than he thought to get started.”

Tia Rosa takes a pull on her pipe.

“Girl, girl. Don’t you know they’s more than bulls in Meridian? It’s the fillies you got to watch out for. Your man’s goin down to Maggie’s cat house, and then he is goin over to the Diamond Dog and piss away the rest of your money with some gamblin man. Then he’ll be home tonight without a bull in sight.”

“You don’t know that,” snaps Lily. Both women fall silent. That silence rings in Lily’s ears, vast and empty and oddly comforting. The baby is still sleeping in his cradle on the porch. “Ethan isn’t like that.”

“Huh.” Tia Rosa heaves herself up and stretches.“What makes you think I don’t? All you see is just some old half-breed woman. But ain’t nothing in this valley I don’t know about. Just ask Scout.”

Lily squints at the sun, midmorning high in the sky. Ethan’s been gone since dawn. “I’m going to fry up some bread. Do you want some?”

Tia Rosa scratches her ribs, shaking her head as she always does when Lily offers food.

“Adios, mija.” The old woman stops, cocking her head to listen. “Now what’s that? Can’t be mister moneyman back already. You got that gun by you, girl?"

Lily peers past Tia Rosa. Down the hill, dust is rising on the skinny little road that links up the homestead with the main road between Mexico and Meridian. In the singing silence she can just hear the sound of hooves.

She quicksteps back to the porch and snatches the rifle leaning against the steps. Cradling the hot metal against her ribs, she waits. Ethan’s taught her how to use the thing – of course, a frontier wife has to take care of herself. But she’s never fired it at anything but a tin can. Yet.

Behind the Scenes: This story is one of several set in the borderlands of the Arizona Territories, circa 1870 or so. I live in the place billed as the "Gateway to the Old West" (true: it's on a sign just up the road), where myths and legends collide and strange things lurk just on the edge of sight.

This is a longish story, but I don't think it's really appropriate for the Chapters section here on Vocal. So I've split it into four sections, with the other three coming out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the following week.